docs: maintainer: discourage taking conversations off-list

Multiple vendors seem to prefer taking discussions off list, and
ask contributors to work with them privately rather than just send
patches to the list. I'd imagine this is because it's hard to fit in
time for random developers popping up with features to review into
packed schedule. From what I've seen "work in private" usually means
someone on the company side will be assigned to handle the interaction,
possibly months later. In worst case, the person scheduled to help
the contributor takes over and writes the code themselves.
This is not how the community is supposed to work.

Reviewed-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Reviewed-by: Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Shuah Khan <skhan@linuxfoundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240713235020.820910-1-kuba@kernel.org
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240712144903.392284-1-kuba@kernel.org

diff --git a/Documentation/maintainer/feature-and-driver-maintainers.rst b/Documentation/maintainer/feature-and-driver-maintainers.rst
index f04cc183e1dee34acef21bc4d8bbf9484f655d21..fb94a9b290616816dbea247e4b2aa903abfa4c19 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/maintainer/feature-and-driver-maintainers.rst
+++ b/Documentation/maintainer/feature-and-driver-maintainers.rst
@@ -83,6 +83,17 @@ bugs as well, if the report is of reasonable quality or indicates a
 problem that might be severe -- especially if they have *Supported*
 status of the codebase in the MAINTAINERS file.
 
+Open development
+----------------
+
+Discussions about user reported issues, and development of new code
+should be conducted in a manner typical for the larger subsystem.
+It is common for development within a single company to be conducted
+behind closed doors. However, development and discussions initiated
+by community members must not be redirected from public to closed forums
+or to private email conversations. Reasonable exceptions to this guidance
+include discussions about security related issues.
+
 Selecting the maintainer
 ========================